


Pause, Restart

by moosetifying



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 15:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18574009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moosetifying/pseuds/moosetifying
Summary: A week after, Eliot opened the door to the penthouse to go for a smoke and found Quentin standing there.





	Pause, Restart

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been…a tough week, to say the least. I still haven’t been able to even think about touching the actual TV show ever again – the idea of it makes me feel sick and awful. But this fandom has been everything to me in the aftermath. Being really, scorchingly angry alongside a couple hundred other fans is genuinely healing, as I've discovered. Turns out, much like throwing model planes at a wall, throwing canon around and breaking it really is cathartic. 
> 
> So here goes. Let’s break canon.

A week after, Eliot opened the door to the penthouse to go for a smoke and found Quentin standing there.

Quentin’s hair was short, shorter than Eliot had ever seen it, and sticking straight up; his big brown eyes were blinking up at Eliot in the sweet, dumb way Eliot had never been able to get enough of. Also, he was entirely naked. He looked like a dream, and that’s what Eliot thought it was—a dream, a grief-induced hallucination, a leftover from months of being trapped inside his own brain—until Quentin said, “Um.”

“Quentin,” Eliot breathed, reaching out, his entire body straining toward him in desperate disbelief and hope. He touched skin, warm, living skin, and gasped a little. “Oh god, Quentin.”

“Who’s Quentin?” Quentin said. “And who are you? Sorry,” he added.

His face was entirely guileless. Entirely blank.

“Well, shit,” Eliot said.

.

There was only Margo in the apartment. There was no one else, because everyone else was gone. Julia had disappeared without Penny 23, Penny 23 was off who knows where, probably sulking about being left behind, Kady was AWOL, Alice had run off immediately after that fucking bonfire, Josh was in Fillory…

The bonfire had brought them together and the moment it had burned down into ashes, they had scattered, gone to the winds—there was no centre anymore. No glue holding them together. The glue was dead, now. 

Or rather, the glue was miraculously, mysteriously alive and very, very confused about it.

“So what do you remember?” Margo asked, hands on hips, enunciating every word. She looked pissed, angry enough that sweet, gentle, entirely amnesiac Quentin was drawing back into the large blanket they’d wrapped him in like a fluffy turtle into its shell. Eliot wanted to brush his fingers through that spiky boyband hair. He wanted to drop a peck on his furrowed forehead. He wanted to never take his eyes off of him. 

“Relax,” Eliot said. “She’s not angry. Just surprised. So what do you remember?” he prompted gently.

Quentin’s shoulders lowered and he ventured a little out of his blanket home, enough that Eliot could see his chin. “Nothing. It was nothing and then I was standing in front of a door. And—and I don’t know who I am or who any of you are or how I got here—I don’t know anything—” his voice was climbing upward in pitch, so exactly like when Quentin got into panics before, that Eliot reacted by instinct, reaching out and pressing his hand along Quentin’s arm. 

“Shhh, we believe you,” he said quietly. “We’ll figure this out together.”

Quentin nodded and relaxed backward a bit, leaning his head against the sofa. 

“Eliot,” Margo said. “Staff meeting, now.”

.

They went to the kitchen, far enough away that Quentin couldn’t hear them if they talked in whispers, but close enough that they could keep an eye on him. Eliot was scared that if he looked away too long, Quentin would disappear, just pop out of existence like the dream Eliot was still half-convinced he was.

“El,” Margo said, and Eliot tore his eyes away from Quentin and focused on her. A week on and he still got a jolt of—love, relief, knowing it was her, fully her and not a figment of his brain. His dear sweet Bambi, staring up at him with rage on her face.

She looked angry but Eliot knew better. She was angry, yes, but also confused and stressed and grieving, and full of the type of hope that was too scary to trust. She just only chose to let the anger show.

“El,” she said again. “What the fuck.”

“I know,” he hissed. “I’m just glad you can see him too, I thought I was hallucinating.”

“What the fuck!” she said and hit at his arm a little bit—but gently, very gently. He’d been magically healed, thanks to the new flood of magic from the reservoir, but that didn’t take away the memories for either of them. 

He caught her hand and held it, dwarfed between both of his own.

“Eliot,” she said quietly. “What do we do?”

“We—we need to get his memories back,” he said. “We need to find out what this is and if it’s permanent and _how the fuck_ —” 

That’s when the entranceway into the kitchen lit up in odd shifting grey shadows. Eliot had just enough time to take in the dim stone hallway beyond lit by muted cold light before Alice ran through the portal, clad entirely in black, looking incongruous against the snowflakes and grey-blues of Brakebills South.

“Did it work?” Alice panted. “I’m not sure if I got the—” she drew up when she saw Quentin from across the room, sitting in his blanket on the sofa, and her eyes went wide. “—coordinates right,” she finished lamely. “Oh god, Quentin—”

Eliot held up a hand to hold her off before she made a running jump at Quentin and ended up traumatizing him forevermore. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Alice tore her eyes off Quentin and actually seemed to take in who she was talking to for the first time. “Why not?”

“Well, he can’t actually remember anything,” Eliot said, trying to keep his voice light, trying to keep it calm— _our dead friend is back and has lost his mind but no big!_

“Was this you?” Margo demanded. 

Alice nodded distractedly; she was looking at Quentin again. Quentin who was alive and staring straight ahead dazedly, like he didn’t care about what was happening in the kitchen at all, like he hadn’t noticed another person appear out of nowhere. “I—I couldn’t just leave it like that.”

“Explain,” Eliot said, and that came out a lot more wildly desperate than he’d meant for it to.

Alice straightened her shoulders and put her chin up, and Eliot was reminded that they were looking at the best magician of any of them. “I found a transmutation spell. Energy into matter. And—and I had a vial of Q’s blood.”

“So that’s where the fuck you disappeared to,” Margo said. 

Alice nodded. “That candy witch, from years ago. I managed to track her down and steal the blood.”

“Where did you even get enough power to do a spell like that?” Margo demanded. “That would require—”

“God-level power?” Alice said, raising an eyebrow. “Yeah. I know. Luckily, I also knew that Mayakofsky had some extra batteries lying around.”

“Fucking Mayakofsky,” Margo spat. Eliot put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“Except I think it went wrong,” Alice said. She glanced at Quentin, eyes wide behind her glasses. “Antarctica to the Mirror World—it’s a big distance and the spell slipped away from me by the end. I think I missed some of his hair particles.”

“You missed a lot more than his hair particles,” Margo snapped. “He doesn’t have a fucking brain!”

“He can’t remember anything,” Eliot said, for what felt like the umpteenth time. He was fixated on that part: his brain kept going in the same circles: _he’s here, he’s alive, it’s him,_ and then running smack into the reality of the situation. 

“At all?” Alice said.

“He says the only thing he knows is being outside the apartment suddenly. Everything before that is blank. And—” Eliot hesitated. “He’s…off. Even beyond that. It’s like he’s completely blank.”

They all considered Quentin, sitting slumped in his blanket, eyes still straight ahead. Even with no memories, it was like he had no personality at all. He just sat and stared, unaware or uncaring that things were happening around him. He spoke when spoken to, and nothing beyond that. He listened but showed no inclination to participate. From his point of view, he’d been plopped into an apartment full of strangers, but he showed no fear or curiosity. There was _nothing_.

It was torture of the worst kind, to have Quentin there, soft and breathing and alive, and yet—not there, not in the way it mattered. To have solace within arm’s reach yet an infinite distance away. 

“I need to think,” Alice said. “And books, I need books.”

.

Now that Eliot knew that this was a real thing that was happening, it was time to start telling people. Considering how fast they’d all scattered, he wasn’t sure where to even start—he’d been mostly out of it, even at the bonfire, too caught up in grief and his injuries and the limitations of once again living in a physical body to pay attention. 

But he’d told Margo who’d gotten Alice to send a message to Kady and somehow, he wasn’t sure how, that led to Julia frantically banging on the door until he let her in.

“Where is he!” Julia shouted. Behind her, Kady crossed her arms, face tight. 

Eliot would have done the same thing in Julia’s situation, so he simply pointed her at the living room. Kady followed her in, trading a silent nod with Eliot. By the time they’d joined the others, Julia was crouching in front of Quentin, staring at him with her face just—indescribable. Like it couldn’t contain everything she was feeling.

“What’s wrong with him,” she said, her voice shaking. Quentin smiled vaguely at her.

“I’m working on it,” Alice said, bent over the coffee table, nose-deep into a stack of books large enough to pass as murder weapons.

“Is it his shade?” Kady said at once. She was wearing her hair in loose curls that tumbled around her shoulders and a look on her face that said she was ready to kick some shit around. Eliot didn’t know Kady very well, but on that point he would follow her without a second thought.

“No.” Julia shook her head sharply, eyes on Quentin. “Not his shade. He’s missing everything, not just his emotions or conscience. He doesn’t have any memories.”

“He doesn’t have a fucking personality,” Margo said, but without any heat.

Alice pulled her face out of her books. “I think it has to do with the Mirror World. It—refracts. It refracted Harriet when she was trapped in there, into several aspects of her personality. I had to pull them together again to make her whole.”

“So this is just an aspect of his personality?” Eliot said.

“No,” Alice said. “Yes. Sort of. I think—when I reincorporated him, I dealt only with the physical atoms of who he was. His body. But I couldn’t get at the rest of it. The essence of him.”

“So the rest of him is still trapped in the Mirror World?” Julia said. It was a question but her tone made it clear she wasn’t asking, really—she knew she was right.

“I’m sorry,” Alice said, her voice tight.

“Don’t be,” Eliot said, meaning it more than he’d ever meant anything. “Please. Don’t be. We can finish this off, properly, together.”

He didn’t even let himself think about what this could mean. Just knew that he would do anything— _anything_ —to make it happen.

“Uh,” someone said from behind them, and they all whirled around. “Josh said something happened, an emergency,” Penny 23 said, and then he saw Quentin. “Fucking hell, what the shit. Fuck.” 

“Oh good,” Alice said. “We needed a Traveller.”

.

Things proceeded apace after that. Alice was a whirlwind of determined energy and scribbled equations; Kady followed in her wake with equal, if rougher intensity, and Penny nodded along while shooting Julia the occasional brooding glance. It was all very business as usual and Eliot couldn’t stand it, because he could see the missing piece in the middle of it all, like a smile with a tooth punched out. Quentin should have been in the thick of it, thrumming with jittery energy, offering suggestions, hair flopping everywhere. 

The lack of him was so glaringly painful that the only reason Eliot hadn’t locked himself in a dark room with a bottle of alcohol was that he was gently holding Quentin’s hand in his own. Quentin was smiling at him, dazed yet sweet—even without his memories or essence, he was still so fucking sweet.

“It’s going to be okay,” Eliot told him. “We’re going to get you back. All of you.”

“And then I’ll remember again?” Quentin asked.

“Absolutely,” Eliot said, squeezing his hand. 

A soft presence on his other side—Margo. Eliot would know her any day, any time. 

“Eliot,” she said softly, and he spared a glance for her. 

“We’re almost ready,” she said. “We need you for the final planning.”

Eliot didn’t want to let go of the steady warmth of Quentin’s hand but he tore himself away with a final squeeze and rejoined the group.

“We need someone to go in to the mirror,” Alice said, pale yet steady. “To find him and help bring him out. He’ll be confused, probably, or—or reluctant.” She swallowed, and Eliot could hear what she’d left unsaid. A man with Quentin’s history, Quentin’s brain, and how he’d died. Easy to connect the dots. “Someone who knows him best.”

“Me,” Julia said at once, and they all nodded. 

“Someone else should go too,” Penny said. “It’s confusing as fuck in there. Safety in numbers.”

Julia rolled her eyes, but Alice nodded. “I can’t go,” she said. “I need to be out here, preparing the spell to reunite him and triggering the beacon spell.”

It was easy, really, to say, “I’ll go.” Easy to nod when Alice asked him if he was sure, when Penny asked if he was up for it. He had his eyes on Julia, and he saw that she understood.

“So it’s settled,” Margo said with kingly finality. “Let’s get going.”

Penny transported them all into a lab in the echoing bowels of Brakebills. There was a mirror and a complicated process involving blood and Penny and prisms—Eliot didn’t exactly hear how, because Margo drew him aside immediately. 

“Eliot,” she said, those dark eyes searching his face, reading him perfectly. “Be careful.”

“Always,” he said, mouth twisting.

“Eliot,” she said again, pressing closer. She let her chin wobble a little—it was calculated, the way she let slip some of that armour to show the pain riding so close to her skin, but he knew it was all for his benefit. “I can’t lose you again. I _can’t._ So get our boy back, but keep yourself fucking alive or else I’ll get in there myself and fucking drag you out by your goddamned fucking hair.”

“Understood,” Eliot said, his voice light, but he pressed an unsteady kiss to her forehead. “I love you, Bambi.” He’d never thought he’d get to say that to her again, and each time it was a privilege.

“I love you,” she said back. “Don’t cock this up.”

.

So it had been a week, in all, since shit had gone down, and all the while Eliot had been doing what he did best, which was take all the things that felt bad and scary and way too large to comfortably deal with, and shoved them in a little box somewhere far away inside him.

He knew now that those bad thoughts really did live on, deep in his mind—he’d spent an inordinate amount of time running through them. He had thought he was ready to maybe stop throwing things into the dark and nailing the door shut, to be brave and drag them out into the light and face them head on, but then he’d woken up into a nightmare and it turned out, resolutions didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered. Not when the subject of said resolution was gone.

So yes, he’d been ignoring the facts of what exactly had happened to him, and what it may have done to him, and what he was in the aftermath of it all. The pain of Quentin’s death had obliterated all that in its scorching, white-hot intensity. 

Only, as he stood before the mirror with Julia a tiny presence at his side, he could feel every inch of his fucking body. His fucking, physical body with its aches and flesh and gnawing humanity. God, it felt awful. Like it wasn’t his own. Like he was a guest in a home that used to belong to him; like he was wearing an old set of clothes that didn’t quite fit comfortably any more. 

He glanced down and met Julia’s level gaze; even with the bags under her eyes, the messy hair, the stark cheekbones, the very obvious devastating grief, she was so fucking steady. Something of the goddess about her, even now, in her humanity.

“Ready?” she asked him.

“Ready,” he said.

Penny cut into his arm; Eliot could feel Julia’s body jerk and then vibrate with forced stillness. He wasn’t sure what was going on between them, exactly—no one had filled him in, and he hadn’t asked—and he didn’t care.

Blood on the mirror and then Penny was stepping back. “Careful,” he said lowly, not quite looking at either of them. 

Julia brushed past Penny without a word and stepped into the mirror. Eliot gave Margo one last glance over his shoulder and followed her through.

.

The Mirror World could best be described as creepy as hell. 

“Hmmm,” Eliot said, drawing his shoulders back and taking it all in. “Well. This is lovely.”

“Have you been here before?” Julia asked, voice hushed. 

Eliot shook his head. “Never.”

“Me either.” Julia shuddered. “It’s horrible.”

In the odd grey light, Julia seemed even more tired than before. Looking at her, Eliot was more aware than ever that he barely knew her. That the only thing that had been connecting them was Quentin, and that thread was only just hanging on.

“What now,” he said, twitching at what he thought was a shifting shadow.

“Alice should be starting the beacon spell at any moment.” Julia had her arms wrapped around herself. “And then…We call for him.”

Right on cue, a beam of light shot out of the room and through the doorway, disappearing into the unknowable depths beyond. They waited, but nothing else happened.

“Q,” Julia said, her voice startlingly loud in the dead silence of this odd backwards Brakebills. “Quentin!”

“Q!” Eliot yelled too. “Please come out!”

Nothing.

“I guess we should. Try and find him,” Julia said. There was reluctance in her voice that Eliot wholeheartedly agreed with. This place felt flattened out, leeched of colour and vibrancy. Nothing lived here and nothing should ever live here and Eliot really did not want to get any deeper into it. But this was for Quentin.

They started off together, side by side, footsteps barely whispering against the not-wood of the floor, as if the empty ringing deadness of the place swallowed up any signs of life.

“Quentin!” Eliot called as they crossed the boundary of the door and out into the hallway beyond. Idly, he noticed that the framed portraits on the walls were—of the backs of heads, their subjects flipped away. The place was a fucking horror movie.

“Quentin!” Julia’s voice was hoarse and desperate. The light of Alice’s beacon spell pierced the gloom, heading away down the hall. “Please!”

“It’s me, Q! It’s Eliot! You saved me!” Eliot’s voice broke a little, to his shame; suddenly, Julia’s hand was in his, her thin fingers curling around his own. He glanced down at her but she wasn’t looking at him; she was looking straight ahead and her face was lighting up like a sunrise or magic or some other beautiful, hopeful thing. 

Eliot looked, and there was Quentin.

Wavery, pale, insubstantial: Eliot could see the hallway beyond right through him. But he was undeniably Quentin; there was a presence about him, if not a physical one, some sort of mental or spiritual heft that the amnesiac physical Quentin had been missing. 

“Quentin,” Eliot breathed, and carefully stepped toward him. Julia, hand still in his, went with him.

They looked at Quentin for a moment and Quentin looked back. He appeared—like himself; his hair was longer than it had been on the physical body waiting out in the real world. But he also seemed shrunken somehow, diminished. Something beyond just lacking a physical body. He looked like there was something in him that was eating him up from the inside out. 

“Oh, fuck,” he said at last, and started to cry.

Eliot cried too. So did Julia. For a few, ridiculous minutes all the three of them did was stare at each other and cry and cry. For once, Eliot didn’t try to hold anything back; there was no one to hide from here, really. There was only pain, fully bared to the world.

Quentin was crying so hard it shook his entire, fragile, not-there body, tears that seemed painful on an incomprehensible level. “Fuck,” he said again, “oh god, fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“Q,” Julia sobbed.

“I fucked up,” Quentin said. “I made a mistake. I made such a big mistake.”

“It’s okay,” Eliot said, letting his tears fall freely down his face. “We can fix it. Help us fix it.”

“I didn’t mean to, really,” Quentin said, through deep shuddering sobs. He didn’t seem to be hearing Eliot. “It was just so fast and I was so tired. I didn’t mean to.”

“Q, listen,” Julia said. She put out a hand to touch his cheek, but it went straight through and she withdrew it quickly, looking alarmed. “We can fix it. We’re here to fix it. Come back with us.”

Quentin was shaking his head, looking at them like he was begging them to understand, to absolve him. “I was just tired and my brain—my stupid brain—I didn’t mean to. I regretted it the moment I did it. I’m so sorry.”

Eliot shared a glance with Julia: he could see his own _what the fuck do we do_ broadcast right back at him on her face.

“Q,” he said. “Quentin. Look at me.”

It wasn’t working. Quentin was caught up in some huge internal struggle, something that was drowning out whatever Eliot and Julia said. Like without his body, he was untethered to any sort of reality but that of whatever was churning in his own mind.

“Eliot,” Julia said quietly. “I—I don’t—I think something’s wrong.”

Everything was slipping away again: Quentin, hope, every possibility that had opened up when Eliot had opened that door and seen Quentin there. It was all fading and he had no idea how to grasp onto it.

Eliot took a deep breath and jumped.

“Here is a truth, Quentin,” he said. “I love you. I’m in love with you. Fuck it, I’m head over heels for you.”

Quentin looked up slowly, his eyes confused.

“I love you so much,” Eliot said. “And I miss you so much. And I just want you back with me.”

Quentin stared.

“Quentin,” Julia said, and now Quentin’s eyes darted to her. “Quentin. Here is another truth. I love you so much. I’ve never had a friend like you. My life is better with you _in it_. I want you there with me. Please come back.”

“Quentin,” Eliot said. Quentin looked back at him. “Here is another truth. You deserve to live. Your story isn’t over. We want you with us.”

Quentin was blinking, like he was slowly pulling himself out of a daze.

“This way, Quentin,” Eliot said very gently. “Can you follow me?”

They started to move, and Quentin went with them, his steps hesitant, faltering, but still progress.

Eliot had noticed how soft Julia’s voice was before, hoarse and soothing; now, in the deadened quiet of the Mirror World, with Quentin latching on to every word she said like it was a lifeline, her voice was infinitely beautiful. She whispered words of comfort and truth, Eliot interjected a few of his own, and together they brought Quentin all the way to the edge of the mirror portal.

Something stopped him there—something invisible that Eliot and Julia couldn’t feel themselves. They left Quentin there, standing desolately at the edge of that intangible boundary, and stepped through.

Out in the real world, light and colour and vivid life hit Eliot all at once in an explosion of sensation: it was like stepping from a winter night directly into the brightest summer day. He reeled a bit, but Julia was still holding his hand; she squeezed it and led him out, past Alice who was frantically setting up the last of her spell.

“Out!” Alice barked. “I can’t have any distractions!”

So dismissed, they all went: Eliot and Julia and Margo and Kady and Penny, leaving only Alice and the pale spectre of Quentin trapped in the mirror.

Margo was shooting Eliot glances that he couldn’t return just yet; part of him was in that room with Alice, entirely focused on what could be happening there. And another part of him was in the Mirror World, laid bare, no pretensions, no armour: just himself and his deepest truths. Out in the light of the real world, he felt twitchy and raw; he wanted his layers back. 

Julia was still standing with him. After a moment, she gently pressed her hand against his arm. He glanced down at her.

“Here’s a truth,” she said, so quietly that he knew it was meant only for him. “I don’t know what I would have picked but that choice was mine to make. And I don’t know how to deal with having it taken away from me.”

She kept her eyes on him the entire time, her chin up, so fucking brave.

A year ago, Eliot might have brushed her off, looked away, dismissed it all. This Eliot took a deep breath and said, “Here’s a truth. I don’t know who I am now, after the Monster took me over. I’m scared I’ll never feel like myself again.”

And then Alice opened the door. She was crying.

“Did—” Eliot’s body was moving forward without his conscious control. “Is—”

Alice nodded. “He’s confused but—”

The rest of her words was lost in the rush to cram every single person past the doorway and into the lab.

Quentin was standing there, hair sticking up all over the place, looking tiny and dishevelled and lost and so fucking young. For a moment, Eliot’s breath caught, his heart sank—and then Quentin looked up and saw them all and his face crumpled up with emotion, and Eliot knew it was him, fully him.

“Q,” Julia gasped, and got the first hug. Quentin pressed his face into her hair; his shoulders were shaking.

And then Julia was disentangling herself, making way for—for Eliot to stumble forward, disbelieving, limbs heavy, and scoop Quentin up in his arms. Quentin, who was alive and breathing and real, thank every fucking useless deity out there.

“I’m sorry,” Quentin said into Eliot’s shirt. His arms were clasped around Eliot’s back; Eliot could feel wet patches spreading where Quentin had his face mashed into Eliot’s chest.

“It’s okay,” Eliot said—and that was all he had time to say before Margo was muscling in demanding a hug for herself.

It was just hugs from there. Hugs and relieved laughter and enough overpouring of emotion that Eliot felt really fucking itchy. But he had Margo under one arm and Quentin under the other so—maybe it was okay to linger in the moment a bit. They deserved it, every single one of them.

.

Later, Eliot found Quentin in his room, perched on his bed, looking at the mess no one had touched, after.

“We burned some of your stuff,” Eliot said. 

“I saw,” Quentin said, but didn’t elaborate. 

“May I—” Eliot motioned. 

Quentin shifted over immediately. “Yeah—yeah, please.” 

Eliot sat delicately on the unmade bed. Silence fell, awkward in a way it wasn’t usually between him and Quentin. All at once, Eliot was very aware that this was the first time he’d been really, actually near Quentin with both of them in full control of their bodies in—a very fucking long time.

Quentin was the first one to break the silence, because of course he was. He was always the one to fling himself headfirst into the unknown.

“I’m really fucking glad you’re okay, El,” he said.

Eliot let out a strangled snort of a laugh. “I could say the same about you.” He nudged a little closer to Quentin. “Please don’t ever do that ever again.”

Quentin was quiet for a moment, and then— “It—it just gets so hard sometimes. Trying every day, when your brain is fighting you every single step of the way. Sometimes…sometimes my brain gets too loud and it just—just drowns everything out. And I hate it. Because I do—I do want to live and I do want to keep trying. I _do_.”

Eliot wrapped an arm around him.

“I do want to live.” Quentin said it again, as if savouring the words in his mouth.

“Quentin,” Eliot said to him. “I mean this: You’re a fucking marvel. You’re so brave that it scares the shit out of me sometimes. And I’m really glad you’re here.”

Quentin leaned into Eliot a little, and the silence settled around them again, not awkward now, not awkward at all.

“I love you too,” Quentin said quietly. “By the way.”

Eliot’s breath caught in his throat. “You—you remember?” he asked stiltedly.

Quentin nodded; the movement brushed his soft spiky hair against Eliot’s neck. “A little. Enough.”

“I guess it’s my turn to bare my chest,” Eliot said lightly, and then paused—restarted, shifting the tone. “No. No jokes. Just me, now. Quentin, when you asked me to give it a try, all those months ago—I said no not because I didn’t want to but because I wanted to.”

Quentin sat up, away from Eliot, and just looked at him, all the depths of those big brown eyes just—fucking beaming into him like a laser. It was hard to continue in the face of all that, but Eliot pressed on doggedly. “I have this thing where I get scared of—of happiness, of anything too good or too true or too real. I run away. I run away a lot. And I ran away from you, and it was the worst mistake I ever made. I’m sorry.”

He wanted to look away, to say something to deflect the enormity of the moment, but he squashed those urges and kept his eyes on Quentin, kept his armour down, let himself be seen and known: vulnerable and stripped away, the raw heart of him.

Quentin’s face—went soft. So fucking soft and warm and affectionate. “Thank you for apologizing. I forgive you.”

“I love you,” Eliot said.

“I love you too,” Quentin said, and they sat side by side, hand in hand, with the moment wrapping itself around them like a warm blanket. 

Time for another jump.

“Hey,” Eliot said, echoing a soft voice from a warm Fillory night so many decades ago, “I—”

But Quentin was already turning his face up, like a flower turning towards the sun. Eliot smiled and bent to meet him, closing his eyes, entirely unafraid.

**Author's Note:**

> ([Quentin’s](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/72/d3/3b/72d33b8ea1e6cb4d52dc04267953f64c.jpg) [hair](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjgxMjMyMzMwOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTE0Mzk5MDE@._V1_.jpg) \- enjoy the visual.)
> 
> You can find me being really salty about the Magicians over on [tumblr](https://moosetifying.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Lots of love to everyone in this dear fandom. And thank you for reading.


End file.
